Lyda Lubienė, the main shareholder of Achema Group, which is one of Lithuania’s largest business conglomerates, says she currently has no intention of selling her stake to any buyer while a legal dispute with minority shareholder Arūnas Laurinaitis continues.
“As long as I’m in the middle of court proceedings, I’m not doing anything else,” Lubienė told BNS in a recent interview.
Switzerland’s MET Group was interested in buying Achema – which owns the Achema fertiliser manufactory in Jonava – but announced last month it had dropped the bid because of the legal uncertainty.
Lubienė also said she has no plans to sell her shares to Laurinaitis, who has expressed interest in buying them but claims she has resisted the move.
Lubienė said Laurinaitis has failed to prove he has sufficient funds to make the purchase or at least carry out an audit of the company. She added that his preemptive right to acquire the shares expired long ago.
“Mr Laurinaitis has filed a lawsuit, and until the court hearing takes place and the process is over, [I’m not making any moves]. That’s exactly why MET pulled out – no one wants to proceed until the legal situation is clear,” she said.
Lubiene acknowledged that the situation at the group’s largest companies – Achema and Klasco – is very difficult. However, she hopes that the European fertiliser market will change in favour of the group after the EU’s import quotas and tariffs on fertilisers from Belarus and Russia take effect in July.
Earlier this year, Laurinaitis, a former Achema Group president, confirmed that he was seeking to purchase a 54-percent stake from Lubienė and her daughter Viktorija Lubytė for nearly 303 million euros.
Faced with resistance from Lubienė, Laurinaitis announced in early February that he had taken legal action to enforce his preemptive right to buy the stake.
The minority shareholder, whose lawsuit effectively blocked MET Group’s acquisition of Lubienė’s shares, says that he still aims to acquire the controlling interest.
“Regardless of what MET has said publicly – that it doesn’t plan to go ahead with the Achema Group acquisition – I’m ready to acquire and continue to participate in the process,” Laurinaitis told BNS in a recent interview.
However, he admitted that Lubiene continues to ignore him and other minority shareholders and has provided no clarity about the group’s future.
MET Group, which announced its intention to acquire a 54-percent stake in Achema Group in early June 2024, said it also aimed to negotiate with minority shareholders and buy out their shares.
On May 21 this year, however, MET said it was pulling out of the deal, citing legal disputes and various uncertainties, particularly unresolved shareholder disputes over preemptive rights and mounting challenges in the fertiliser sector.
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